INDUSTRY ATTENDANCE IS NEEDED BEFORE A
PUBLIC HEARING TODAY
Friday APRIL 26, 2019 Time:
10:30am Location: Room 2E of the Legislative Office Building 300 Capitol
Ave., Hartford The Finance Revenue and Bonding Committee is holding a public
hearing on Bill No. 1121 An Act Concerning Prioritize Progress Strong industry
support is needed!
Trio of Killingly bridges to be rebuilt next year
John Penney
KILLINGLY — With state grant money and bonding funding in hand, the town is preparing next year to demolish and rebuild three Killingly bridges, work that will require some residents to take detours for several months.
The state Bonding Commission this month approved $635,963 in grants to help cover the cost of work on two bridges on Valley Road – over the Whetstone and Mashentuck brooks – and a span on Bear Hill Road. Residents in 2017 approved spending up to $1.8 million in bonding money to cover the remainder of the projects’ cost.
Town Engineer Dave Capacchione said the three bridges are all at least 80 years old and were high on the state Department of Transportation’s inspection list for needing attention.
“We’re seeing concrete spalling, where the material is flaking and crumbling off due to age and weather,” he said. “There’s been frost heaves that caused cracks in the deck and seams separating underneath.”
Project designs are nearly complete, though property easement discussions are still ongoing. Capacchione said work plans will be submitted to the state Department of Transportation before bids are solicited.
Valley Road is considered a “connector road,” or one that feeds into a busier traffic path. Capacchione said shutting down one Valley Road bridge will require some nearby residents to detour through Pratt or Cook Hill Road. People affected by the Bear Hill Road work will likely loop into Rhode Island briefly before coming back into town.
On Wednesday, just a few feet away from the Whetstone Brook bridge, Valley Road resident Inocencio Perez was breaking up soil in his garden, readying the plot for pepper and tomato seeds.
“The detours won’t bother me; I’ve already worked out where I need to go,” he said. “The bridge looks pretty strong, though. But I guess they need to do the work.”
Lamont’s campaign for tolls begins a critical phase
Mark Pazniokas
Gov. Ned Lamont’s push for highway tolls has entered a new and critical phase: The administration rebooted its lobbying team two weeks ago, and they are talking to legislators about a series of tweaks intended to increase the consumer and political appeal of the governor’s top priority and biggest challenge.
With less than six weeks until the legislature’s constitutional adjournment deadline, the administration and lawmakers are trying to settle on a legislative draft specific enough to assure them of what they are buying, but flexible enough to enable Lamont to negotiate a final tolls plan with the Federal Highway Administration.
A small reduction in the gasoline tax, cheaper inner-city bus fares, ways to provide discounts for drivers who lack the credit or checking accounts necessary for an EZ pass, a list of specific transportation improvements, and limits on pricing and the number of tolling gantries are among the items sources say are under discussion.
“This opportunity to truly transform the transportation system and therefore Connecticut’s economy for decades to come doesn’t come along every year, and we don’t intend to waste that opportunity,” said Colleen Flanagan Johnson, the governor’s senior adviser who is now overseeing a staff of a half-dozen aides working on the tolls campaign.
House and Senate Democratic legislative leaders say they welcome a new lobbying effort that includes two administration officials: Marc Bradley, who ran the governor’s winning campaign in 2018 and now oversees external and constituent services; and former state Sen. Jonathan Harris, an undersecretary at the Office of Policy and Management.
“I think they’re bringing in people who have a good relationship with the legislature,” said Senate President Pro Tem Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven. “Jonathan, having served in the Senate, is very well regarded in this chamber, and Marc Bradley is someone enormously well-respected for the role he played in the campaign.”
Legislators generally panned the administration’s roll out of the tolls proposal in February, complaining it lacked details about how it would work or a strategy for passage. The administration’s pitch has been the state needs tolling revenue to maintain and modernize infrastructure, while offering few specific ideas that would spark the imagination about faster commutes worth the price of tolls.
Looney and House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz, D-Berlin, were among a small group of Democratic lawmakers to meet Wednesday with Lamont and his transportation commissioner, Joseph J.Giulietti, about the still-evolving tolling legislation and what it could mean for Connecticut commuters.
“As long as we’re having this open dialogue, I think we can get there,” Aresimowicz said of getting tolls to a vote. “I can’t say if it’s going to be three weeks from now or if it’s going to be on the last night. But I’m feeling more confident we can get to a deal that allows us to fund our infrastructure.”Two weeks ago, Lamont and the Democratic co-chairs of the legislature’s Transportation Committee tried to reframe the issue in terms of specific rush-hour commutes, assuming 4.4 cents a mile with discounts for state drivers: from New Haven to Hartford on 91, $1.72; from Stamford to New Haven on 95, $1.80; from Danbury to Waterbury on 84, $1.28.
Lamont said last week he saw no need for more details about his plan: He already had spelled out there would be no more than 50 tolling gantries on the state’s four most-congested highways, Route 15 and Interstates 84, 91 and 95. But his staff already was at work with lawmakers to add details to a tolls bill.
Flanagan Johnson declined to confirm whether a gas-tax reduction would be an element of a tolls deal, but she acknowledged an emphasis on trying to mitigate the impact of tolls on lower-income commuters. The administration was looking at discounts for those who most need them, as well as the mechanics of how to provide EZ passes to drivers without credit or bank accounts.
“The discounts are a major issue for my caucus,” Aresimowicz said.
An issue that has proven harder to resolve are the limits a bill would place on pricing. How much flexibility would the legislature entrust the state Department of Transportation?
Connecticut is being permitted to devise a tolling system without losing federal highway revenue under a specific program that calls for peak and off-peak prices to discourage driving at peak times. A challenge for state officials is the lack of guidance from the Federal Highway Administration on the pricing differential desired for peak and off-peak trips.
“There is no hard and fast number,” said Thomas J. Maziarz, the state DOT’s chief of policy and planning.
The state will try to make the case that data shows even a modest difference in pricing will result in less traffic, and that revenue from the tolls will permit projects that could make significant improvements, especially on the often gridlocked stretch of I-95 in Fairfield County. One potential project would be expanding the exit lanes from I-95 onto Route 8 in Bridgeport, a major bottleneck in the afternoon commute north from Stamford, he said.
The administration is working on a vote count, a task complicated by the lack of a finished piece of legislation.
Sen. Gary Winfield, D-New Haven, said he is a strong supporter of tolls in concept, but needs more details.
“What are you asking us to do?” said Rep. Jeffrey A. Currey, D-East Hartford.
Flanagan Johnson said her staff knows the questions, and the bill must provide answers.
“What do the rates look like? What kind of certainty can we give, not only to residents but to legislators who are taking this vote? There will be some more structure around that. What we want to make sure we do is provide information to legislators who are taking the vote to help them fully understand the opportunity they have to make a true difference in Connecticut’s economy.”
The give-and-take with legislators is constructive, she said, with lawmakers learning more about the process and the administration seeing the issues that must be resolved before commitments are made. That process takes time.
“People want to know what the bill is before they say hard yes, hard no. And that’s more than fair,” Flanagan Johnson said. “So we’re working through that. On the other end, we don’t want to rush it to simply get a bill. We want to get the right bill.”In separate interviews, Looney and Aresimowicz said the first vote by the House or Senate on tolls must come no later than June 3. The session ends two days later.
That could mean tolls or taxes or bonding — or some combination thereof.think we should lead with a tax.”The legislation could be a third way on tolls, which Gov. Ned Lamont has made his top issue since taking office. The governor is pushing strongly for passage in 2019, but with all Republicans firmly against tolls, some Democrats opposing them and others on the fence, it’s no done deal.“The Governor and Legislative Leaders and Transportation Chairs are engaged in thoughtful dialogue about a number of issues related to the best way to invest in our transportation system and grow our economy, including concepts similar to Sen. Fonfara’s,” said Colleen Flanagan Johnson, senior advisor to the governor. “We look forward to discussing this further with him.” The bill will receive a public hearing on Monday.
Rep. Jason Rojas, D-East Hartford, supported his committee co-chair’s idea Thursday.
“An established plan would be helpful to better understanding our needs and it would also assist with providing taxpayers with a clearer picture of how their tax dollars would be invested which I believe would allow greater confidence in a tolling proposal,” Rojas said.
Lawmakers have already pushed three toll-related bills out of the Transportation Committee, after hours of transportation debates. Sen. Carlo Leone, D-Stamford, who chairs the committee, said he is “knee deep” with leadership creating one final toll proposal that can be voted on by the full House and Senate.
“It could potentially roll into ours or not. We are working on that as we speak,” said Leone, of Fonfara’s commission. “One of the ideas is to have a complete list of all of the outstanding transportation projects the state needs to deal with… I could easily come up with a 30-year spending plan from that.”
Fonfara’s “Strategic Transportation Planning Commission” would comprise nine transportation and economic experts, appointed by the governor, including the commissioners of the Department of Transportation and Economic and Community Development.
“The way they did it in Massachusetts was they have a commission,” said Fonfara. “It wasn’t my idea — I’m stealing the idea.... frankly you could charge DOT with doing it, but I feel that’s too inside baseball. I want it to be credible.”
The commission would assess the funding needed to bring Connecticut’s highways, bridges, rails and ports into a state of good repair and develop a 30-year spending plan to maintain and update the state’s transportation infrastructure in a proactive manner, the legislation states. It would also recommend the financing structure to pay for the plan, including taxes, user fees — like tolls — bonding and public-private partnerships.
The bill requires all of this information in a report by Jan. 17, 2020 and an accompanying piece of legislation that would implement the recommendations of the commission by that date. The legislature would then hold a public hearing and vote.
Lamont has promised his tolling plan would have no more than 50 gantries on I-95, 91, 84 and Route 15. He has promised discounts for Connecticut residents and commuters, estimating that the cost per mile for these drivers would be about 4.4 cents.
His office says this plan will bring in $800 million annually probably starting in 2023, after Federal Highway Administration approval is obtained and electronic gantries are installed. The big selling point for Lamont and many Democrats is about 40 percent of this toll revenue would come from out-of-state drivers, they say.
While the Department of Transportation has a $12.1 billion five-year capital spending plan that would cover fiscal years 2019 to 2023, it has not released a longer term plan. Reporters have repeatedly asked to see such a document. None has been provided, even as Lamont repeatedly makes the very public case that toll revenue is needed to fund transportation upkeep and improvements.
A 2018 Department of Transportation memo, written before Lamont took office, analyzing a Republican transportation spending plan states “In recent months there has been an almost unanimous support for maintaining or improving transportation in Connecticut. In order to achieve that goal and fully understand the associated long term funding requirements, a long term [Special Transportation Fund] financial plan is required.”
The first component of the financial plan should a be long-term capital plan of at least 5-10 years, the memo states.
Republicans have crafted a transportation spending and funding plan called “Prioritize Progress” — which Democrats, including Lamont, repeatedly refer to as “Prioritize Borrowing.”
Their proposal, which also creates a “Transportation Strategy and Advisory Board” and would spend $65 billion over 30 years, using borrowing and federal money, will receive a public hearing Friday, before the Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee, which Fonfara leads.
Sen. Alex Bergstein, D-Greenwich, a strong tolls supporter, said she continues to hope tolls will pass.
“There are a lot of moving pieces,” said Bergstein.“This is the fiscally responsible solution, and I hope we can coordinate our legislative efforts and embrace it.”